A good cup of coffee has a greater effect on men than on women, according to an investigation.

The study, which was made with 668 healthy volunteers, demonstrates how an espresso coffee stimulated men in only ten minutes. Women responded in a similar way but to a lesser extent.

The authors of the study, investigators from the University of Barcelona, believe that some of these effects can be psychological because the results were similar with decaffeinated coffee.

The volunteers were asked to drink regular espresso, with 100 milligrams of caffeine per cup, and decaffeinated espresso, with only 5 milligrams per cup.

Afterwards, the investigators observed the changes in the attention span of the participants in the study.

As many men as women observed that their levels of activity improved after drinking regular coffee and that they started to feel that improvement in only ten minutes.

According to the investigators, caffeine achieves its maximum concentration in the blood after forty-five minutes, but they observed that at least half of that concentration occurred during the first fifteen minutes.

And that effect seems to have been manifested more strongly among men. Decaffeinated coffee provoked a similar but minor effect and stimulated women more.

Ana Adan, who headed the investigation, explained that many studies have shown the stimulating effects of caffeine, “but no studies have been made in terms of the sex of the consumers.”

Anna Denny, of the British Nutrition Foundation, said that this study “establishes that certain food can have different effects in men and women.”

Saturday, December 27, 2008

If you are a native speaker of a Romance language and are studying English, “Interlingua multilingue” can be very useful for you. In electronic communications, it is very useful to know how to express yourself briefly, simply, and clearly. The language of the brief articles on this site exemplify this kind of expression, and if you study them carefully, you will be able to express yourself in a similar way.

The Central Intelligence Agency of the United States (CIA) has found a new way of getting information from Afghani warlords: Viagra.

A regional warlord sixty years of age with four wives, for example, received four tablets, and four days afterward he furnished information about the movement of members of the Taliban in exchange for more tablets.

The use of Viagra has to be managed carefully, of course, because in many rural areas of Afghanistan people don’t know what it is used for.

“We don’t give it to a young man,” said a CIA agent, “but it can be an excellent incentive for making connections with older men.”

In the case of the sixty-year-old warlord, who rules over a clan in the south of Afghanistan and who had not cooperated, the agents discovered that he had four wives.

In that case he was told what the tablets did before they were offered to him. Four days later the agents returned.

“He came to us with a smile,” said the agent. “Afterwards we were able to do what we wanted in that zone.”

The tablet can place the warlord in a position of authority once again, said the agent.

The CIA has a long list of incentives for the most important warlords, including dental services, visas, toys, and medicine.

Three Chinese warships are preparing to sail toward the territorial waters of Somalia with the goal of protecting the merchant marine of the country from pirate attacks.

Up to now there have been more than 100 pirate attacks this year near the coasts of Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden, including seven Chinese ships. In addition, the pirates have threatened ships transporting humanitarian aid to Somalia.

This is the first Chinese naval operation outside the Pacific Ocean.

“The acts of piracy in the Gulf of Aden and near the coasts of Somalia have increased intolerably since the beginning of the year, putting in danger the security of the ships being attacked and their sailors, including our own ships,” said a spokesman from the Defense Ministry of China, Huang Xueping.

The Chinese government says that its forces will board and inspect ships that they believe to be pirate ships, will try to rescue the ones being attacked, and will defend themselves vigorously if they are attacked.

The president elect of the United States, Barack Obama, has praised the decision of George Bush to support the automobile industry with a package of $17 billion.

Nevertheless Obama warned the three large automobile companies that they must not waste the money and must go forward in the development of less contaminating automobiles.

President George W. Bush justified his decision to offer financial help to the automobile industry because its collapse would aggravate the economic crisis afflicting the country.

At first the automobile manufacturers will receive $13.4 billion from the package of $700 billion approved for rescuing Wall Street. The rest will arrive before the end of March.

Not everyone in the world thinks that the failure of these companies would have as devastating an effect as the companies suggest because under U.S. rules, companies that fall into bankruptcy have the opportunity to renegotiate their debts.

Caviar confiscated by Italian authorities during police operations will be distributed this year as a Christmas gift to the poorest people of Milan in soup kitchens, hospices, and shelters in the city.

About forty kilograms of beluga caviar were confiscated in November by Italian authorities. The confiscation came about when two illegal shipments coming from Poland arrived in Italy as contraband.

According to the newspaper "Corriere Della Sera," the confiscated caviar has a value of $550,000.

Groups and activists in favor of rights for gays and transsexuals criticized commentaries made by Pope Benedict XVI, who insisted that humanity must be protected from "self destruction," which, according to him, causes gay behavior and sex-change operations.

On Monday, in front of the cardinals and members of the Roman Curia, the head of the Catholic Church said that it is as important to preserve "man as a creature" as to defend tropical forests.

His comments were deemed "irresponsible and unacceptable" by the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement (LCGM), headquarted in the United Kingdom.

The Catholic Church is opposed to gay marriage and teaches that though being homosexual is not a sin, it is sinful to have physical relations with people of the same sex.

A few weeks ago, the Vatican criticized the use of terms such as "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" in a United Nations resolution to remove the stigma from homosexuality.

Toward the end of the century many of the Swiss glaciers will have disappeared, warn two scientific studies by the Swiss Federal Institute of technology.

The investigators concluded that the glaciers of this European country are disappearing at a very accelerated rate, which is so great that only the largest will survive.

The scientists measured the total volume of ice in the Swiss Alps and observed in detail the melting tendencies in thirty representative glaciers. They concluded that the total volume of ice at this moment is sixty-four cubic kilometers. This number, according to the experts, indicates about ten cubic kilometers less ice than a decade ago, and many of the smallest glaciers will have disappeared in the next twenty to sixty years.

Despite everything, in the next hundred years the most robust glaciers will continue their existence, the participants in the studies believe. "The largest glaciers will still be around at the end of the twenty-first century, but they will be a lot smaller. And many of the smallest glaciers will have disappeared in the next twenty to sixty years," said Matthias Huss, one of the scientists involved in the investigation.

For Switzerland it is of vital importance to understand what the development of the glaciers will be like. More than half the electricity used in the country is produced in hydroelectric plants driven by the waters of the glaciers.

More than forty years after an experiment on torture made in the United States, scientists have discovered that volunteers even now are willing to practice it if they receive an order.

Researchers at the Univerity of Santa Clara, in California, repeated the famous “Milgram experiment,” which in 1963 concluded that 70% of its volunteers showed themselves willing to increase the voltage of the shocks, even when there were no new responses from the actor receiving them.

The current study, published in the journal of the American Psychology Association, used Milgram’s same method. The majority of the volunteers showed themselves willing to cause the shocks, even knowing that they were going to provoke pain in another human being.

According to Jerry Burger, the supervisor of the new experiment, there is not necessarily anything wrong with the volunteers. “When they find themselves under enormous pressure, people do unsettling things.”

For Burger, the experiment serves to explain in part why common people in wartime easily commit atrocities.

The Milgrim experiment also was replicated recently in Great Britain for a BBC documentary, and the results were similar.

“We shouldn’t conclude that those voluntareers are not good people. There is also enormous social influence,” explained the psychologist Abigail San, who co-ordinated the experiment.

She says that the volunteers were told that the shocks applied to other people were part of the complicated structure of scientific research.

They tend to identify themselves enormously with the “project” and don’t pay attention to the entreaties of the people being “tortured,” San said. “They don’t remember to determine their moral position before all this.

Bolivia is one of the poorest countries of Latin America, but it has eliminated illiteracy, with the help of Cuba and Venezuela, something that neither Brazil, Mexico or Argentina have done.

The Bolivian authorities used an audiovisual literacy method developed by the Cubans, known by the slogan “Yes I Can,” in which the teachers give instruction in reading and writing.

Cuba not only helped with its experience, but also donated to the government of Evo Morales 30,000 television sets, 30,000 video recorders, and 30,000 videotapes to implement the teaching method, and Venezuela gave the Bolivians more than 8,000 solar panels so that the program could also reach peasant communities, where the illiteracy level is higher and where in many cases there is no electricity.

After a campaign of thirty-three months, the initiative taught reading and writing to some 827,000 Bolivians, according to statistics from the Education and Culture Ministry of Bolivia. With this help the country has probably reduced its rate of illiteracy to around three percent, a number large enough to declare that the country is free of illiterates.

Learning to read and write is a right, but it also stimulates and promotes personal and emotional dignity. When people acquire this right, they soon find better options in life and better economic income.

For some, it can seem contradictory that a country with high rates of poverty has very low rates of illiteracy, but the case of Bolivia is proof that it is not necessary to be rich to fight against illiteracy. It depends on what the priorities are and where the resources are directed.

Organizations that defend the rights of homosexuals in California are suing to annul Proposition 8, but the groups in California that oppose marriage between people of the same sex and who in November passed a referendum to forbid them sued the court to annul the marriages that have already taken place.

Gay marriages were authorized in June of this year by the California supreme court, which nullified a law defining marriage as the union between a man and a woman, and it has been calculated that after this decision some 18,000 couples of the same sex have been married.

Last November 4, during the primary elections, 52.5% of the voters approved the so-called Proposition 8, which consists of a constitutional amendment to re-establish the definition of marriage as the union between a man and a woman.

But the attorney general of the state, Edmund Brown, appeared before the court to ask that it invalidate Proposition 8 because it “deprives groups of people of basic constitutional rights without a legitimate justification.” For Brown, the right of two people of the same sex to get married is “an aspect of liberty that is guaranteed by the constitution of California.”

The president elect of the United States, Barack Obama, has praised the decision of George Bush to support the automobile industry with a package of $17 billion.

Nevertheless Obama warned the three large automobile companies that they must not waste the money and must go forward in the development of less contaminating automobiles.

President George W. Bush justified his decision to offer financial help to the automobile industry because its collapse would aggravate the economic crisis afflicting the country.

At first the automobile manufacturers will receive $13.4 billion from the package of $700 billion approved for rescuing Wall Street. The rest will arrive before the end of March.

Not everyone in the world thinks that the failure of these companies would have as devastating an effect as the companies suggest because under U.S. rules, companies that fall into bankruptcy have the opportunity to renegotiate their debts.

Monday, December 22, 2008

This blog presents brief articles in clear and simple language on a variety of topics of general interest from contemporary news sources that can be found on the Internet. The first version is in Interlingua; the second version is in one of its living source languages (English, French, Italian, and Spanish/Portuguese, considered as a single language).

If you want, you can read these articles only for the information they contain. I hope, however, that you will use them for comparative study of Interlingua, its source languages, and English. If you use the texts on this site in this way, you will find that your knowledge of Interlingua and its source languages will continue to grow.

You will also learn to express yourself clearly and simply in the language or languages that you generally use. If one of the source languages of Interlingua is your native language, you will also find that the opportunity to study these brief articles will significantly strengthen your knowledge of the language(s) that you habitually use.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Although Interlingua and its source languages have their differences in vocabulary and grammar, many constructions are identical among them. One example is the title “Interlingua in interlingua”, which is valid in Interlingua and English. Another example is the sentence “Titan, the largest of the approximately sixty moons of Saturn, may have active ice volcanoes or ice volcanoes that were active until recently,” which in Portuguese is “Titã, a maior das cerca de 60 luas de Saturno, pode ter vulcões de gelo ativos ou que estiveram ativos até recentemente,” and which is Interlingua is “Titan, le plus grande del approximativemente 60 lunas de Saturno, pote haber vulcanos de glacie active o que esseva active usque recentemente.”

Such similarities are useful for students of Interlingua and its source languages because they make it easy to acquire a passive knowledge of Interlingua and the languages from which it was extracted. Acquiring an active knowledge, naturally, requires more intense study. But even in this case, the study of parallel texts provides useful opportunities to learn how similar languages resemble one another--and how they differ!---

The presidents of Latin American and Caribbean countries who participated this week in a series of summit conferences in Brazil demanded that the United States remove the economic sanctions imposed on Cuba forty-six years ago, declaring that this embargo violates international law and obstructs regional integration.

The Cuban president, Raul Castro, attended the meeting in his first international trip after replacing his brother Fidel two years ago.

The declaration is seen as a declaration of independence at a time when the influence of the United States in the region is at its lowest point.

The most emphatic demand was made by the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, who said that if the United States does not end its sanctions, it runs the risk of having all its embassadors expelled from the region.

Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, the president of Brazil, emphasized the African heritage of Obama as a symbol of change and asked that he end the "blocade" of Cuba.

Castro expressed his gratitude for continental solidarity in support of Cuba and said he was willing to have conversations with the new American president but "only after the end of the embargo and only if it takes place on a basis of equality."

In anther sign of good will toward Cuba, the island was admitted to the "Rio Group," an informal policy-coördinating body that has various countries of the region as members.

During their conferences, the presidents of twelve South American countries arrived at an agreement for a common regional-defense policy and also for an agreement to confront common dangers and resolve tensions that could possibly emerge among them in the future.

The presidents of Latin American and Caribbean countries who participated this week in a series of summit conferences in Brazil demanded that the United States remove the economic sanctions imposed on Cuba forty-six years ago, declaring that this embargo violates international law and obstructs regional integration.

The Cuban president, Raul Castro, attended the meeting in his first international trip after replacing his brother Fidel two years ago.

The declaration is seen as a declaration of independence at a time when the influence of the United States in the region is at its lowest point.

The most emphatic demand was made by the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, who said that if the United States does not end its sanctions, it runs the risk of having all its embassadors expelled from the region.

Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, the president of Brazil, emphasized the African heritage of Obama as a symbol of change and asked that he end the "blocade" of Cuba.

Castro expressed his gratitude for continental solidarity in support of Cuba and said he was willing to have conversations with the new American president but "only after the end of the embargo and only if it takes place on a basis of equality."

In anther sign of good will toward Cuba, the island was admitted to the "Rio Group," an informal policy-coördinating body that has various countries of the region as members.

During their conferences, the presidents of twelve South American countries arrived at an agreement for a common regional-defense policy and also for an agreement to confront common dangers and resolve tensions that could possibly emerge among them in the future.

Titan, the largest of the approximately sixty moons of Saturn, may have active ice volcanoes or ice volcanoes that were active until recently, suggest observations made by the Cassini program and presented in a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

Instead of lava, it is believed that these volcanos erupt with frozen water, ammonia, and methane.

According to Bob Nelson, of NASA, cryovulcanism is viable in the region of Saturn "in an object of the size of Titan."

Former observations had identified some intriguing characteristics on the surface of Titan that suggested the presence of cryovulcanism, but the thick atmosphere that covers this satellite of Saturn always made it difficult to confirm this phenomenon.

But evidence of the existence of ice volcanoes is increasing. Scientists from the team responsible for the Cassini program were able to locate two distinct alterations in luminosity in two separate locations in the equatorial region of Titan.

The alterations were identified by the spectrometer on Cassini when the probe flew over Titan between June, 2004, and March, 2006.

In one of the identified locations, the scientists found evidence of ammonia ice, which might have come from the interior of Titan.

Ammonia is a material that many believe can be found in the interior of Titan, but it is not found on its surface, and finding ammonia on the surface at determined periods is a strong indication that materials from the interior of the satellite are being transported to the surface.

Another indication of cryovulcanism is the significant amount of methane retained in Titan's atmosphere. Without any way of being replaced, the original concentration of methane in the atmosphere of this moon of Saturn would no doubt have been destroyed a long time ago by the ultraviolet light of the sun.

Enceladus, one of the moons of Saturn, behaves in a way greatly resembling the earth and could also contain water below its surface. New images of the frozen satellite reveal that its surface is divided and splits up in exactly the way the ground below the oceans of our planet moves to form new crust.

The images, captured by NASA's Cassini probe, were presented during the American Geophysical Union conference taking place in San Francisco.

The discovery, say astronomers, is "very emotional" because it confirms the idea that the satellite has water below its surface and possibly life.

Enceladus is one of the whitest objects of the solar system, as if snow had just fallen onto its surface, and the reason is that the moon is completely covered with ice.

The images of Enceladus show cracks in the south-pole region, which is the place where "activity" in the crust has been observed.

The idea that the ground beneath the oceans of the world is splitting up and separating has become the basis for the theory of plate tectonics.

This means that the gigantic blocks of the earth's crust move and slowly change the position of our continents.

It seems that something very similar is occurring at the south pole of Enceladus, as Cassini has shown, but the tectonic blocks of Enceladus are made of ice, and there is probably liquid water below them.

It was already known that Enceladus has certain fundamental chemical components that are essential for sustaining life, but the principal ingredient was lacking: liquid water.

Thanks to Cassini, we now know that Enceladus has a source of internal heat, a certain amount of light, and organic chemicals, but now, to confirm the presence of water, it will be necessary to plan a specific mission to Enceladus that can take samples of the ice on its surface and investigate what lies below the cracks.